Format directives

strftime and strptime are implemented in pure Python with the same directive set on every platform. Unknown directives raise ValueError (the standard library passes them to the C library, which varies by platform).

Directives

Directive	Meaning	Example (2083-06-15 14:05:09)
%a	Abbreviated weekday	Thu
%A	Full weekday	Thursday
%b, %h	Abbreviated BS month	Ash
%B	Full BS month	Ashwin
%C	Century	20
%d	Day of the month (01–32)	15
%e	Day of the month, space-padded	15
%f	Microsecond (000000–999999)	000000
%G	BS week-numbering year (see sambat.date.isocalendar())	2083
%H	Hour (00–23)	14
%I	Hour (01–12)	02
%j	Day of the BS year (001–366)	171
%m	BS month (01–12)	06
%M	Minute	05
%p	AM/PM	PM
%S	Second	09
%u	Weekday, Monday = 1 … Sunday = 7	4
%U	Week of the BS year, weeks starting Sunday (00–53)	24
%V	BS week number (01–53)	25
%w	Weekday, Sunday = 0 … Saturday = 6	4
%W	Week of the BS year, weeks starting Monday (00–53)	24
%y	Year without century; parsed as 2000 + yy	83
%Y	BS year, at least four digits	2083
%z	UTC offset +HHMM[SS[.ffffff]] (empty if naive)	+0545
%:z	UTC offset +HH:MM[:SS[.ffffff]]	+05:45
%Z	Time zone name (empty if naive)	+0545
%c	Locale date and time	Thu Ash 15 14:05:09 2083
%x	Locale date	06/15/83
%X	Locale time	14:05:09
%D	%m/%d/%y	06/15/83
%F	%Y-%m-%d	2083-06-15
%r	%I:%M:%S %p	02:05:09 PM
%R	%H:%M	14:05
%T	%H:%M:%S	14:05:09
%n, %t, %%	Newline, tab, %

Devanagari digits: %O

%O before any numeric directive (%OY, %Od, %OH, …) renders that field with Devanagari digits, whatever the locale. This follows the POSIX meaning of %O (“alternative digits”).

Locales

strftime, strptime and the Locale*Calendar classes take an explicit Locale. The built-in locales are EN (English names, ASCII digits; the default) and NE (Devanagari names and digits). The process C locale is never consulted.

	EN	NE
Months	Baishakh, Jestha, Asar, Shrawan, Bhadra, Ashwin, Kartik, Mangsir, Poush, Magh, Falgun, Chaitra	बैशाख, जेठ, असार, साउन, भदौ, असोज, कात्तिक, मंसिर, पुस, माघ, फागुन, चैत
Weekdays (Monday first)	Monday … Sunday	सोमबार, मङ्गलबार, बुधबार, बिहीबार, शुक्रबार, शनिबार, आइतबार
%p	AM, PM	पूर्वाह्न, अपराह्न
%c	%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Y	%Y %B %d, %A %H:%M:%S
%x	%m/%d/%y	%Y/%m/%d

Create variants with dataclasses.replace(), for example Nepali names with ASCII digits:

>>> import dataclasses
>>> from sambat import date
>>> from sambat.locale import NE, ASCII_DIGITS
>>> date(2083, 6, 15).strftime("%d %B %Y", locale=dataclasses.replace(NE, digits=ASCII_DIGITS))
'15 असोज 2083'

Parsing rules

• Numbers may use ASCII or Devanagari digits.

• Month and weekday names are matched case-insensitively against the locale’s names and its documented alternative spellings (Locale.month_aliases, Locale.weekday_aliases).

• %y means 2000 + yy.

• Without a year the result is in BS 2000; parsing a day of the month without a year emits DeprecationWarning, as Python 3.13+ does.

• Composite directives (%c, %x, %X, %D, %F, %r, %R, %T) expand to their templates.